Featured speaker Adam Gamoran and Kinder Institute Director Ruth N. López Turley discussed education policy and the potential for research to address wide-ranging challenges in education. Gamoran is the president of the William T. Grant Foundation, which supports research aimed at improving the lives of young people in the United States. Gamoran previously helmed the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, and his research has focused on educational inequality and school reform.
About Adam Gamoran
Adam Gamoran is the president of the William T. Grant Foundation. He provides leadership for the foundation’s strategic direction, shapes its agenda and tactics, and partners with the foundation's board of trustees to advance its mission and objectives. Since joining the foundation, he launched a new initiative to support research on reducing inequality in youth outcomes, and has continued the foundation’s ongoing work to improve the use of research evidence in policy and practice decisions that affect young people.
From 1984 to 2013, Adam served on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he held the John D. MacArthur Chair in Sociology and Educational Policy Studies. From 2001-2004, he chaired the Department of Sociology, and from 2004-2013 he directed the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.
Adam’s research focused on educational inequality and school reform. Recent publications include “Does racial isolation in school lead to long-term disadvantages? Labor-market consequences of high school racial composition” (American Journal of Sociology, 2016) and “Effects of school segregation and school resources in a changing policy context” (Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 2016). Earlier, he edited "Standards-based reform and the poverty gap: Lessons for No Child Left Behind" (Brookings Institution Press, 2007) and co-edited "Stratification in higher education: A comparative study" (Stanford University Press, 2007) and "Methodological advances in cross-national surveys of educational achievement" (National Academy Press, 2002). His research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, as well as by the Spencer Foundation and William T. Grant Foundation.
Adam is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Education, which he now serves as vice president, and was twice appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the National Board for Education Sciences. From 2014 to 2020, he chaired the Board on Science Education of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. In 2013, he received the Spencer Foundation Award for contributions to research on education policy from the Association for Public Policy and Management, and in 2014 he was honored with the award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Education from the American Educational Research Association.
Adam earned his Ph.D. in education from the University of Chicago in 1984.
About the Kinder Institute Forum
The Kinder Institute Forum lecture series brings thought leaders from around the world to Houston to share ideas about today’s most pressing urban issues. Previous speakers include Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond, global urbanist Richard Florida, historian Richard Rothstein, urban advocate and strategist Carol Coletta, education leader Ruth J. Simmons and U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert L. Santos.
